Hip Heritage and Heritage Pasts : Tensions when re-fashioning museum culture

When museums of cultural heritage are no longer defined solely in terms of their collections and cultural environments, how much may they change before they cease to be museums and what do they become then? As a means of approaching this question this chapter focuses on two institutions of Swedish cultural heritage, The American Swedish Institute (ASI) in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Kulturen in Lund that have spent the first part of the 21st century thinking and rethinking what heritage under their auspices can be in contemporary society. Although these institutions operate in two national contexts, they have many similarities in organization, financial models and operations. The chapter problematizes the manner in which these museums as institutions of history and identity are being re-thought, re-framed, and re-fashioned in the cultural and economic context of the museum market in which they operate. It asks, how is heritage affected when it is increasingly framed as a marketable commodity and how do new and developing ways of thinking about heritage re-fashioning museum audiences